trademarks

Apple abandons lawsuit against Amazon

You say App Store, I say Appstore. Apple has decided to call the whole thing off, and has dropped its lawsuit against Amazon for infringing on its trademark for its digital software retail distribution service -- see how much easier it is to just say app store? Apple's lawyers have decided that they don't need a court to tell them that combining "app" and "store" does not make a unique and distinguishable brand, and that it's a lost cause to keep people from referring to a store that sells apps as an app store.

Trademarks are important so that companies can keep people from stepping all over their brand, and few companies have their products as uniformly branded as Apple. They have the iPhone, iPad, iMac, iEtc. It made sense that they tried to get a trademark on the iPad mini, but they were denied one by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office which said the addition of "mini" was merely descriptive."

The murky waters of trademark law have churned out their latest victim, and this one's a doozy. Gib van Ert self-published A Long Time Ago: Growing up with and out of Star Wars back in August on Kindle, and it was eventually offered as a paperback version through an Amazon affiliate. It had been available ever since, up until this past Monday, December 24th. Van Ert was sent an email claiming that the online retailer had reviewed his book and blocked it because it contained a trademarked term. In a very real way, Amazon altered the deal.

Part of the whole trademark nonsense is the idea that they have to be aggressively enforced lest they be lost to the company that filed them. It's why a number of lawsuits are filed about brand names versus slightly similar brand names, and it's a mighty headache for small companies that get caught in the crossfire just because they happen to share a name in some way with a larger company or their product. This is the reasoning that saw Apple take on iFone, a Mexican telecommunications company. Unfortunately for Apple, they've lost in a big way and now won't be able to sell phones under the iPhone name in Mexico.

If you're wondering why Donkey Kong seems a little embarrassed in the picture to the left, it's because Nintendo filed a request with the US Patent and Trademark Office to trademark the phrase "It's on like Donkey Kong." Really, though.
For those of you who have never heard the phrase uttered, but are for some reason visiting a geek culture site, "it's on like Donkey Kong" is a tie-wearing-monkey-themed way to indicate that some kind of competition or rivalry has begun.
Nintendo claims the phrase points to Donkey Kong as being a pop culture icon, which is a reason for wanting to trademark the thing, but we can only hope they've filed for the trademark in order to make a new DK Rap, which you should absolutely listen to all the way through since Cranky takes it to the fridge.
(via Kotaku)